Impact of Competition in Energy Market on Promotion of Renewables: An Agent-Based Model Approach.

This study developed the agent-based model (ABM) in which agents play the multiplayer game “Energy Transition” instead of human players. The theme of “Energy Transition” is the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables in a deregulated energy market. The purpose of this study is to clarify the impact of price competition on the promotion of renewables in the energy market. Two types of contrastive agents are designed for the model. One is a competitive agent who is aggressive in expanding the market share to make profits. The other is a non-competitive agent who is more eager to invest in renewables for long-term profits than to compete with others for short-term profits. Two types of simulations are performed. In the simulation-1, the total number of agents is fixed and the ratio of two types of agents is changed. In the simulation-2, the ratio of two types of agents is fixed, and the aggressiveness of competitive agents is changed. The results show that the total usage of renewable energy and total profit in the market become smaller as the number of competitive agents increases. Further, more aggressive agents make the competition stronger and largely decrease the usage of renewables.